Opportunity area · theme founders discuss · intermediate

Distribution approach for bad

Distribution · Bad for ex-agency builders: sell the path to first win in under ten minutes of activation, then talk growth. Reject “for everyone in martech.” Original insight: community volume predicts attention, not willingness to pay—price a tiny pilot early.

Problem

ex-agency builders describe the same loop: notice the mess late, patch it manually, promise a system later, repeat next month. Unexpected challenge: English-language threads overstate global demand; local budgets and compliance may differ. Hidden cost: permissions, exports, and “who owns this spreadsheet?” politics.

Target user

Operators accountable for outcomes when “bad” breaks

Proposed solution

Publish a brutal “done” definition. Instrument failure modes. Price so support labor does not bankrupt cohort one. Distribution rule: track conversations started and pilots dated, not impressions. Counter-intuitive advice: a supervised correct workflow beats a flashy autonomous demo that needs babysitting. Distribution bottleneck: warm intros dry up; build a boring weekly motion you can run alone. One caution: do not hire until five customers renew or expand without you rewriting the product each time. One recommendation: define one success metric, put it on a one-page offer, and reject scope that does not move it. Practical next step: schedule the next user call before the next coding session. Real-world pattern: Stripe won by removing friction on a job merchants already had—copy the posture, not the category. Straight take: skip it if you need status from flashy demos. The winning version looks operationally dull and commercially sharp.